Embodiments of the invention relate to a method, system, and computer program product to group and prioritize communications. Attention reports are automatically generated with representative communications displayed to a user for processing. As new communications are received, they are adaptively incorporated into the groupings and prioritization, together with previously received and processed communications.
Legal claims defining the scope of protection, as filed with the USPTO.
1. A method comprising: generating, by a computer system comprising a processing unit in communication with a data storage, a unified messaging interface incorporating data items from respective electronic communications; applying a time stamp to each respective data item; deriving at least a first activity area and a second activity area from the generated data items and creating one or more groupings of communications, including clustering the data items into one or more of the first and second activity areas based at least on a similarity score, wherein the clustering of data items comprises computing the similarity score between two groups of data items as a linear combination of similarities of the two groups of data items, the similarities being a time span between the time stamps of data items; representing each of the first and second activity areas in a vector space as a tuple comprising the clustered data items, wherein each of the first and second activity areas is further defined based on a task and each of the activity areas represents a defined community of interconnected participants associated with the task; generating a first attention report for visual display at a first client site in communication with a data center, the generated first report based on one or more characteristics inherent to the first client site and illustrating one or more created groupings of communications, including selecting a representative communication for each activity area in the first attention report, wherein each activity area is a defined community of interconnected participants, and at least one of the activity areas comprising a time critical communication is prioritized over a different activity area, wherein a data item criticality is determined based on the time span between time stamps of data items; in response to receiving a first new electronic communication local to the first client site, generating a new data item for the new electronic communication; modeling the new data item in relation to one or more characteristics inherent to the first generated report, including comparing the new data item to each derived activity area, and classifying the new data item into one of the activity areas based on the comparison, wherein the similarity score is associated with similarity between the new data item and the data items of one of the first and second activity areas; generating a second attention report incorporating the modeled data item into an area selected from the group consisting of: one of the activity areas and placement with an unaffiliated data item; and displaying the second attention report at the first client site, wherein, when the similarity score exceeds a threshold of the first and second activity areas the communication is added to one of the first and second activity areas, and when the similarity score does not meet any threshold the communication is placed in a general pool.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first and second activity areas includes an assigned importance level, a topic list, and an activity area contributor list, wherein the contributor list comprises at least one contributor, and wherein each contributor on the contributor list comprises an associated contributor importance level.
3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising ranking communications in each of the first and second activity areas, including calculating a benefit score for each communication, and employing the calculated benefit score as a factor in the ranking.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein the benefit score includes a factor selected from the group consisting of: importance level of a sender in the activity area, similarity between the communication and the first and second activity areas, the recency of the communication and other communications, and combinations thereof.
5. The method of claim 3 , further comprising determining a quantity of representative communications for each of the first and second activity areas.
6. The method of claim 5 , wherein space allowed for the quantity of representative communications in the second attention report is proportional to an importance measurement level associated with the first and second activity areas.
7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing hierarchical clustering on all communications in the general pool and generating a new activity area based on similarity measurements among the communications in the general pool.
8. A computer program product for use with electronic communication data, the computer program product comprising a computer readable non-transitory storage medium having computer readable program code embodied thereon, the program code which when executed causes a computer to: generate, by a computer system comprising a processing unit in communication with a data storage, a unified message interface incorporating data items from respective electronic communications; apply a time stamp to each respective communication; derive at least one activity area from the generated data items to create one or more groupings of communications, including clustering the generated data items into one or more respective activity areas based at least on a similarity score, wherein the clustering of data items further comprises computing the similarity score between two groups of data items as a linear combination of similarities of the two groups of data items, the similarities being a time span between the time stamps of data items; represent each activity area as a tuple comprising information associated with the clustered data items, wherein each of the first and second activity areas is further defined based on a task and each of the activity areas represents a defined community of interconnected participants associated with the task; generate a first attention report for visual display at a first client site in communication with a data center, the generated first report based on one or more characteristics inherent to the first client site and illustrate one or more created groupings of communications, including select a representative communication for each activity area in the first attention report, wherein each activity area is a defined community of interconnected participants, and at least one of the activity areas comprising a time critical communication is prioritized over another activity area, wherein a data item criticality is determined based on the time span between time stamps of data items; in response to receipt of a first new electronic communication local to the first client site, generate a new data item for the new electronic communication; model the new data item in relation to one or more characteristics inherent to the first generated report, including compare the new data item to each activity area, and classify the new data item into one of the activity areas based on the comparison, wherein the similarity score is associated with similarity between the new data item and the data items of one of the first and second activity areas; generate a second attention report to incorporate the modeled data item into an area selected from the group consisting of: one of the activity areas and placement with an unaffiliated data item; and display the second attention report at the first client site, wherein, when the similarity score exceeds a threshold of the first and second activity areas the communication is added to one of the first and second activity areas, and when the similarity score does not meet any threshold the communication is placed in a general pool.
9. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising program code to assign an importance level to each activity area and rank communications within each activity area, including calculating a benefit score for each communication, and program code to employ the calculated benefit score as a factor in the communication ranking.
10. The computer program product of claim 9 , further comprising program code to calculate the benefit score based on a factor selected from the group consisting of: importance level of a sender in this activity area, similarity between the communication and the activity area, the recency of the communication and other communications already seen by the user, and combinations thereof.
11. The computer program product of claim 9 , further comprising program code to determine a quantity of representative communications for each activity area, wherein space allowed for the quantity of representative communications in the second attention report is proportional to an importance measurement level associated with the first and second activity areas.
12. The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising program code to perform hierarchical clustering on all communications in the general pool and to generate a new activity area based on similarity measurements among the communications in the general pool.
13. A system comprising: a shared pool of configurable resources, the shared pool including a physical host in communication with a plurality of physical machines, the physical host having a processing unit in communication with memory and data storage and a unified message interface, wherein the processing unit is configured to: incorporate data items from respective electronic communications; apply a time stamp to each respective communication; derive a first activity area and a second activity area from the generated data items and create one or more groupings of communications, including clustering the data items into one or more of the first and second activity areas based at least on a similarity score, wherein the clustering of data items further comprises computing the similarity score between two groups of data items as a linear combination of similarities of the two groups of data items, the similarities being a time span between the time stamps of data items; represent each of the first and second activity areas in a vector space as a tuple comprising the clustered data items, wherein each of the first and second activity areas is further defined based on a task and each of the activity areas represents a defined community of interconnected participants associated with the task; and in response to receiving a new electronic communication: generate a first attention report for visual display at a first client site in communication with a data center, the generated first report based on one or more characteristics inherent to the first client site and illustrate one or more created groupings of communications, including select a representative communication for each activity area in the first attention report, wherein each activity area is a defined community of interconnected participants, and at least one of the activity areas comprising a time critical communication is prioritized over a different activity area, wherein a data item criticality is determined based on the time span between time stamps of data items; generate a new data item for the new electronic communication; model the new data item in relation to one or more characteristics inherent to the first generated report, including compare the new data item to each activity area, and classify the new data item into one of the activity areas, wherein the similarity score is associated with similarity between the new data item and the data items of one of the first and second activity areas; generate a second attention report incorporating the modeled data item into an area selected from the group consisting of: one of the activity areas and placement with an unaffiliated data item; and display the second attention report at the first client site, wherein, when the similarity score exceeds a threshold of the first and second activity areas the communication is added to one of the first and second activity areas, and when the similarity score does not meet any threshold the communication is placed in a general pool.
14. The system of claim 13 , further comprising the processing unit to assign the first and second activity areas an importance level, a topic list, and an activity area contributor list, wherein the contributor list comprises at least one contributor, and wherein each contributor on the contributor list comprises an associated contributor importance level.
15. The system of claim 13 , further comprising the processing unit to compute a benefit score for each communication, the benefit score being a factor in ranking of the communications.
16. The system of claim 15 , further comprising the processing unit to determine a quantity of representative communications for each activity area.
17. The system of claim 16 , further comprising the processing unit to determine space allowed for the quantity of representative communications based on an importance measurement level associated with the first and second activity areas.
18. The system of claim 13 , further comprising the processing unit to hierarchically cluster all communications in the general pool and generate a new activity area based on similarity measurements among the communications in the general pool.
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May 31, 2012
June 23, 2020
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